What makes a great "home" page? According to search engines like Google it's attributes like, page title, keywords, and most importantly relevant text based content. Obviously your home page is the most important page of your web site. Most internet users will leave your site within seconds if they don't immediately see something that they find useful. Of course a well designed web site making use of nice looking images and graphics will help, and a user friendly layout with easy access to navigation is a must. However the difference between a good home page and a great one is the content and how often it is maintained.

A common challenge web site owners face is the lack of time to update their home page on a regular basis. Others don't have access to their web site or don't know how to make changes on their own. Many leave their web site updates in the hands of their webmaster, designer, or other third parties often resulting in additional costs. Some have limits on how many updates or changes they can make per month.

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Labels: blog, blogging, carp, design, rss, seo

As a web site owner it is important to recognize your target market and make it as simple as possible for your potential customers to find your products or services. Internet users can be impatient, and with no shortage of competition visitors can quickly lose interest in your web site moving on to the next one in the search results. Now, if you have this particular problem then at least you have traffic going to your web site and it's simply a matter of how to keep your visitors interested. This article will touch on some of the common mistakes I see on web sites.

I see a lot of different web sites from all sorts of industries everyday and there are a few basic mistakes I see quite frequently that are easily fixed. This isn't just about the design or the SEO specifically, but the simple and most basic details that are often over looked. For example, let's say I'm a DJ and have my own DJ company called "John's DJ Services". My web site has been designed to showcase my offered services, display images from past events, and even some testimonials from previous clients. I have contact information including my company email address and a phone number. Sound like a pretty good web site concept? Not bad, but what's missing? I see this on a daily basis and I guarantee it is costing these companies money. Where is this DJ company located? What area of the city, country, or world are these great services being offered? It's unbelievable how hard it can be at times to determine where geographically a company is offering it's service based on its web site. I often find myself using Google to search the area code in their phone number just to find out what part of the world the company is in! The only reason I even bother is because I am evaluating their web site for them by request. If I was a potential customer there is no way I would waste my time and I would be off to the next site.

I see a lot of different web sites from all sorts of industries everyday and there are a few basic mistakes I see quite frequently that are easily fixed. This isn't just about the design or the SEO specifically, but the simple and most basic details that are often over looked. For example, let's say I'm a DJ and have my own DJ company called "John's DJ Services". My web site has been designed to showcase my offered services, display images from past events, and even some testimonials from previous clients. I have contact information including my company email address and a phone number. Sound like a pretty good web site concept? Not bad, but what's missing? I see this on a daily basis and I guarantee it is costing these companies money. Where is this DJ company located? What area of the city, country, or world are these great services being offered? It's unbelievable how hard it can be at times to determine where geographically a company is offering it's service based on its web site. I often find myself using Google to search the area code in their phone number just to find out what part of the world the company is in! The only reason I even bother is because I am evaluating their web site for them by request. If I was a potential customer there is no way I would waste my time and I would be off to the next site.

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In times like these with the economy heading in the direction it has been, is there still room in your marketing budget for SEO? Well, it depends how you look at it. I don't believe that right now we can apply the old saying that "it takes money to make money" even though this still may be true. I think during these times of financial uncertainty we need to approach our marketing strategy in general with care. Obviously if your business does not rely heavily on it's web site for generating sales then it would make sense for SEO to be one of the first budgets to be cut. However if your web site generates even one quarter of your revenue does it make sense to put your search engine optimization on hold?

Lets face it, the internet is not going anywhere, and even in times like these it continues to evolve while more primitive forms of advertising become less and less effective. Yet many business owners feel more secure using the old, newspaper or magazine adds, or other less "web friendly" forms of marketing during these difficult times. The fact is your web site has the power to get you through the tough times. People are still searching for products and services with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN in record numbers. Many people ask, how can I afford to keep my budget for SEO when my sales are dropping? The answer is simple. Find new and more creative ways of optimizing your web site. Of course hiring a company has been the easiest method in the past for business owners, where as now maybe reinventing is the way to go.

There are no guarantees in SEO, and likely never will be. What works today, may not tomorrow and thats why there are companies that stay on top it for you allowing you to take care of what you do best, running your business. Patience has always been key with SEO, and if you are looking to find ways to trim your marketing budget, this remains true. Learning search engine optimization is not the same as learning web design. Web design is like building cars for Chevy, whereas SEO is like tuning a Chevy for a NASCAR race. Having said that sometimes the do-it-yourself approach is the way to go when attempting to get more out of less.

One thing you can do is read forums, or blogs to reach people who have experience and explore new ideas of ways to build links, target specific keywords, and find niche markets that have less web sites competing. Talking with SEO companies can help as well. Many offer consultations at more affordable rates than large scale ongoing campaigns. The one thing I would not do is stop your SEO altogether. Not only would this likely have a reverse affect on any previous optimization you have done, it will also take you twice as long in the future to get back on track. If your competitors take their foot of the gas this is even more reason to keep yours firmly pressed to the floor. Take advantage of other slipping web sites and jump in front.

As a business owner myself I have felt the affects the slowed economy and the last thing on my mind is letting up on the SEO of my web site. In fact it's quite the opposite. Now more than ever search engine optimization is keeping thousands of businesses thriving in an otherwise unstable economy.

Labels: budget, do it yourself, economy, seo

This is probably the most unspoken question amongst potential SEO clients - search engine optimization can be expensive. Sure, the payoff is great, but if you don't have the money to begin with, you simply can't afford it. So what to do? Optimizing your own web site can seem like a daunting task, but is it really all that hard?

The answer is no. As long as you have some time, basic html skills, a little creativity and patience. Assuming you already have a good domain name, decent hosting, and a web site designed, here's how I would approach it.

First, make sure the very first page everyone sees is search-engine friendly. Make sure your primary keyword phrase appears first in your title, and can be found throughout text on the first page and throughout the site. Make sure there is text on your first page and not just an entrance page or flash movie. Those types of intros and entrance pages look blank to search engines. You want yours to look relevant for your keyword or key phrase. Include few paragraphs about what the site is selling or offering. As well, be sure to include your geographic area if your service or product is geographically specific. Make sure that when people who don't know anything about your industry or product hit that first page, that they have no doubt as to what the web site's purpose is within seconds. If visitors have that experience, chances are, so will search engine robots.

Second, make sure the rest of your site matches the same search engine friendliness as your first page. Make sure there is a decent amount of textual information on each page, text that includes your keywords and key phrases. Your web site will never rank well on the search engines for any keyword or key phrase that can't be found on the site itself. You also need to clean up your code. Try to use CSS styles when designing the site, and include the styles in a separate style sheet as opposed to the page's header. Move all scripts in the header into an include file. You also want all of your inter-site links to use the full URL rather than just the file name or directory. These can sometimes count as incoming links.

The next thing you want to do is keep the whole site dynamic. There are a number of ways to do this. You can syndicate a frequently updated RSS feed on your site to keep the content fresh. You may want to have your own blog on-site and post to it frequently. You may accept submissions of content from web site visitors. There are many ways to keep your content fresh and growing. This shows the search engine that the site is not something that is out of date.

The final, and most important thing to do to make sure your site is well optimized, is launch an aggressive link development campaign. This isn't quite as simple as it used to be, just merely trading links with relevant sites is not going to do the trick. What you want to do is focus on one-way incoming links. There are plenty of ways to do this. You can offer something in return for a link to your site that is not a link from your site - perhaps a discount on services or products, a mention in your newsletter or custom-written content for their site. Be creative, you'd be surprised what people will give you a link for.

Another way to get one-way incoming links is article submission. Write articles, like I am right now, and submit them to good article distribution places. Find out which online periodicals are in your industry and submit your articles to them in hopes of publication. Be sure to include a link back to your site in your author bio. The links from the article distribution sites are not very valuable themselves, but if, from those site, good relevant web sites pick up your article, they must link back to you and those are the links that will fare well for your web site.

You can also ask your friends, colleagues, business contacts, and anyone else you can think of who have web sites, to link to yours.

If you follow all of these, and don't give up, you can see results anywhere from right away to 6 months from now. Be patient, nothing worthwhile is ever instantaneous, and hard work always pays off. Keep at it and you'll be in the top ten and getting more traffic than you ever have before.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, diy, do it yourself

Labels: articles, back links, diy, search engine optimization, seo

SEO is an area of great conjecture, theory and pontification by so–called experts. Most have never worked in the fields of Marketing or Advertising. SEO is the process which makes your website visible to robots. The more a robot understands your website, the better your ranking will be across search engines. Organic SEO is ethical optimization without the help of any paid placement program. As an SEO expert, I always prefer to optimize websites using this method.

One can hold this SEO position quite confidently because SEO is not going away. Or, SEO practitioners can expand their boundaries to become more general online marketers - and call themselves just that. I absolutely agree, but SEO is also about making sure the site can be easily crawled and indexed by search engines. From a search engine perspective, the best site in the world is unlikely to rank if the bot can’t extract any content from it. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as search engines will see you as an authority on the topic.

The competitive aspects of SEO come from the fact that SEO is always changing, and SEO practitioners need to adapt and keep up to remain competitive in the SERPs. There is a TON of free SEO information on the web. SEO is a lot like life. You learn a lot as you go along and make a few mistakes along the way.

However recently I’ve been redeveloping my own website and so all of the SEO issues started to spring to mind - will it spider, won’t it spider, will clients find me etc etc. SEO is not a one time issue. Its main purpose is not only to put your website in the top results (for the searches relevant to your content), but to keep this for long time.

Good SEO is having your content readable, expert SEO is using title tags, keyword-rich content and such. It’s important in any type of marketing to engage new target audiences, and especially over the web, SEO is a great method to do just that.

The elephant in the room with SEO is paid links. You may have a wonderful validating, user friendly page, but if your competition has 1000 backlink lead on you, you'll never see the top SERP spot for big keywords. While SEO is almost always a good idea, if you're counting on it to save a failing business, you may want to rethink things. Since Google is now by far the most popular search engine, a seo issue for Google is worth mentioning. Google finds the most relevant sites for the key words exactly as they were typed.

SEO is not about hoping that the search engines will get it right - it’s about helping them get it right. In the short run, unless these SEO issues are addressed, message boards will lack the power to set high in the competitive search areas. SEO is a very powerful tool for Internet marketing and, when harnessed correctly, you can see website traffic and conversions multiply providing excellent return on investment.

While the copy and content you choose is critical to SEO success, it's important that you also consider your website visitors and why they are visiting your website. Your SEO copy writing should focus on two key factors: 1) Proper structure for SEO purposes and 2) Effective positioning and selling of your goods and services. If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities the internet holds. Whether your site provides content, services, products, or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users. The more creative you write, the more chance you have got for someone to link to your website.

Selecting right effective keyword for search engine optimization and web site promotion is key. Automatic generate, suggestion and analyze the most top popular keywords and keyword phrases related to your business. Are their any other ways besides searches to find potential clients for your business? Any databases online to find specific client companies? There is no question that for any successful online business, a significant presence and high rankings in search engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo is a necessary. However, to attain high or top rankings in popular search engines is not an easy task, especially for competitive keywords.

Article Written By J. Foley

Internet marketers deal in a number of different strategies on a day to day basis when it comes to increasing the overall popularity of their websites, and driving more traffic to that website. It has been discovered that articles are considered the best internet marketing tool when it comes to search engine optimization. There are many different reasons for this, and more and more individuals are contributing their findings in order to establish credentials when it comes to this marketing technique. Here, you will gain a little insight as to why marketing articles may just be your key to success.

When you have an article that is properly geared for popular search engines like Windows Live Search, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google, and other ones, you will immediately find that your content climbs the ranks when it comes to popularity on those search engines. It is a proven fact that the higher your content ranks in these search engines, more visitors will end up on your pages. The individuals that will visit your website in this situation are referred to as 'targeted traffic'. Basically, this means that these individuals are searching for your products and services specifically. Traffic is virtually useless if it is not considered to be 'targeted'.

Article marketing is considered to be popular because of the fact that it is a cost effective method of advertising. Generally, it does not take very long to create an effective and properly optimized keyword if you are truly an expert in your field. Perhaps you feel that you do not have the knowledge or the ability to compose these articles on your own - this is actually really common. However, there is a solution for this issue! There are many article directories that will allow you to use the content written by other authors. Then, there are services out there that play host to freelancers who are willing to compose your articles for a small fee. Many find that having these types of services automates their campaign and makes them highly successful!

The next reason that article marketing is an effective marketing solution is that there are a number of directories where you can place your content, and then backlink to your website in order to increase your web site's search engine ranking. A good example of this type of directory is 'Extreme Articles'. Here, you can place all of your articles, regardless of subject, and even create an effective author resource box that will allow you to provide readers with the link to your website, free eBooks, free reports, and other important marketing tools. In addition to this there are other directories that are as popular, such as Ezine and even Associated Content! The best thing is that these articles can actually represent you for life and are free to post!
Articles that are properly optimized for the internet implement the use of keywords and phrases that are keyword based in order to establish rankings in major search engines. For example, if you are offering a free eBook on recipes, it is likely that your article will contain keywords like 'free recipes', 'cooking tips', 'free cooking recipes', and similar keywords and phrases. If you have an article marketing campaign, it is quite likely that those interested in this topic will search for these exact keywords. When they do, your articles will appear first on the search engines!

Can you think of a better way to let people know that your products and services are out there? Probably not!

For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- www.ezines-marketing-magic.com

by Suzy Lakra

Labels: articles, keywords, sem, seo

It is easier today to build a website than it was just a few years ago. Not only is building a website easier but the point and click editing and design tools available make creating a professional looking website simple. However, there is one problem most novice website owners eventually encounter that can be the most frustrating part of owning a website: Targeted Organic Traffic.

Once novice website owners complete their website, getting people to view the website is the next obstacle that must be overcome. Simply building a website and uploading it to the host servers will not magically put the new website in front of the millions of people that surf the Internet everyday. New websites must be optimized in order to receive traffic and in order to get this traffic new website owners must implement proper Search Engine Optimization.

The search engine optimization process begins even before the website is built and designed. Before a website is built, a target market or niche must be chosen and this target market is what the website will be built around. New website builders must first determine the market, then do keyword research to locate the search words for the market that people are placing in the search engines that relate to the website theme.

Keyword research is such an important part of the website building process that if overlooked or not properly done, could make the whole website building process in vain. People that are building their first website are usually excited about their new endeavor and quickly become disillusioned once they realize that there website is receiving little or no traffic.

Search engine optimization is a process that must be learned and is also dynamic and ever changing. What works today may not work three months from now because search engines like Google are always tweaking and changing their algorithms for two very important reasons:

The first reason is to deliver a better product. Google is the behemoth of all search engines with the lion share of searches done on the Internet each day, leaving Yahoo and MSN in their wake. Since Google is the market leader, they pride themselves on delivering the most up to date and relevant information being delivered to their users.

The first reason Google constantly tweaks their algorithms leads to the second reason: Because Google is the market leader among search engines, scammers, spammers and black hats constantly try to game the Google system to reach the top slots on Google to exploit the massive amount of traffic that Google produces each day.

This is why search engine optimization is such a difficult part of the website experience for the novice. Search engine optimization is better learned by trial and error rather than taught as theory in the classroom since SEO is an ever changing process. Utilizing the services of a reputable SEO firm is the best avenue for novice website builders that do not have the time to learn the ropes of SEO. However, it should be noted that proper SEO techniques are not exclusive to SEO firms. On the contrary, SEO concepts and techniques can be learned by anyone that has the time and discipline to do so.


About the Author

Doug Fisher writes about search engine optimization and various other subjects. Please visit his search engine marketing Memphis, SEO blog for more information.

Labels: google, search engines, seo, traffic, web design